“Excuse me,” John murmured, rising to his feet. “I have some things to see to…” He trailed off and coughed, looking ill at ease.
“And I should go to the children.” Marianne rose. “You must wish to have some time together. Welcome home, Alec.”
In the silence after their departure, Alec turned to his mother. “I know everyone will have questions, Mother. You mustn’t tell Julia she should go on as if nothing has happened.”
She pressed her lips together. “Julia should moderate her tongue.”
Alec was surprised into a short laugh. His sister had always been the most outspoken of the Hayes children, for she had known she was the apple of their father’s eye and would get away with anything. “Why start now?”
His mother didn’t respond to it. She touched the cuff of his jacket again, smoothing her fingertips over the fabric as though to reassure herself he was real. “Never mind. Julia will get over her upset. All will be well now that you are home again.”
Alec thought of all the reasons she was wrong. He suspected his mother was willfully turning a blind eye to every one of those reasons, and that it would only delay the inevitable questions and explanations. More potently than ever, he wished he had been able to refute the charges of treason; now he had come home without the vindication he needed and would be even more suspect because of it. Who would believe him innocent after he had disappeared for five years without a word to his family? Thanks to Stafford’s intervention with the Home Office, he wasn’t about to be arrested, but Alec hardly thought that would prove anything to the people of Marston, who had long ago accepted his guilt.
But it would be cruel to say that to her now. Let one person at least rejoice in his return. He covered her hand on his arm with his own. “I hope so, Mother.”
But I doubt it.
Chapter 2
Alec strode toward the breakfast room early the next morning, still buttoning his coat. A previous assignment for Stafford had been as a footman, where he’d had to rise before dawn to start fires and begin his day’s chores, and he had kept to the hours ever since. They weren’t so different from army hours. Even if he hadn’t been accustomed to rising early, though, Alec would have been up and dressed; he was desperately eager to leave the house.
His mother had put him in his father’s chamber. Of course it must have been Frederick’s until his death, but Alec remembered only his father in that room, from the stern reprimands he had received as a child to the solemn farewell he had taken of his father, by then grown old and ill and confined to bed, before leaving on that last fateful campaign in Belgium. Alec had shied away from it; he asked for his old room, but after some fretting his mother finally confessed it was now John’s. All of Alec’s possessions had been packed away in the attic after Waterloo. Besides, she urged him, he should have the master’s suite now that he was the master. It seemed to tighten a sort of noose around his neck, hearing those words, but in the interest of peace and grace, he had just nodded and accepted it.
But by the time morning came, Alec thought he might go mad if he didn’t get out of that room—out of the whole house, in fact. He intended to gulp down a cup of coffee and spare himself and his family a painful breakfast together. Perhaps a long ride about the property would restore his connection to the place and bring him some peace.
He pushed open the door and stopped short. Julia stood looking out the window, a cup of tea in her hand. At his entrance she turned with a smile that withered as soon as she saw him.
“Good morning,” he said.
She sipped her tea and turned back to the window. “Good morning.”
The sideboard had already been laid out with a number of dishes, a welcome sight. Still, from the blushing sky, it was very early. “Do you normally rise this early?” For the life of him he couldn’t recall what Julia had done before he left.
“Yes,” she muttered.
“Ah,” Alec said when it was clear she meant to say no more. “It is just one of many things I have forgotten.”
“Perhaps I’ve changed. It’s been years and years, you know.”
He heard the chill in her words. Even though he told himself it would take time for them to get used to each other again, it pricked his temper a little bit. “I am aware of exactly how long it’s been, Julia.”
She gave a quiet sniff.
Alec poured a cup of coffee. “I don’t pretend nothing has changed. By all means, speak your mind.”
“What can I have to say, to the prodigal son returned home at long last? To our own Lazarus, back from the dead when Mother mourned all these years not even being able to tend your grave? Why, what could I possibly have to say that might interest you now, when you’ve not cared a fig for what any of us thought or felt for the last five years?” Her light, airy tone was more biting than any sarcasm or bitterness could have been.
He took a sip of the coffee. Hot and rich, it was the best coffee he’d had in years. Once he would have met Julia on her own terms, replied in kind, and erupted in a blazing fury. As children, they were two of a kind in temperament. He had grown
